Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Close Proximity	By : MissLibrarian Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 2385 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the magical world of Harry Potter nor any of the characters within it. I am not making any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-I
- 2-II
- 1
- 2
A/N: Thanks very much to everyone who has read this wee tale so far. Look out for another update fairly soon! =) In the mean time I hope you enjoy the next chapter.

Review Replies

Use2b2t2 – Thanks very much for being my first review! Hopefully all of your questions will be answered in time but it wouldn’t be fun to give the game away right at the beginning ;) Enjoy chapter two.

Mrs.AphroditeLupin – I love Snape too! Lol <3 Sorry for the slight wait! Thanks very much for leaving me a review.

Slytherin_Goddess – I’m glad it’s caught your interest! Thank you very much for your review. I hope the rest of it remains as intriguing =)

Brittany – Thank you very much for your lovely review, and the feedback on In The Restricted Section too. Yes, I have been a big fan of Ms. Figg for a long time – and jealous of her ability to write so well and so fast! I hope you enjoy what’s to come as well.

And thank you to everyone who rated too. See you soon! If you enjoy please consider leaving me a review, it would make me very happy =) ~Marie

II

For the first few hours the way was easy-going. One wide, spacious cavern opened up onto the next, the team found themselves wandering through cave-upon-cave of breathtaking sights like abandoned rooms in a flamboyant museum. Dazzling crystals, surreal hand-like formations, pits and precipices – flawless examples of geology were laid out before them in an endless showcase of the wonder of nature. Three or four hours into their expedition they found a domed, apparently empty cavern, which was filled with flickering blue lights only visible when they shone their wands directly at the walls.

“What are they?” Harris asked, more flickering specks appearing wherever he aimed his wand.

“They look like some sort of insect,” Hermione mused, moving slowly nearer to the closest wall to stare closely at one of the creatures. “They’re only visible in our wandlight. How strange!”

“They’re reacting to your magic,” Snape said suddenly, his unexpected voice near her shoulder making her start.

She look around in the direction to which he pointed and saw, on the darkened wall away from the glare of their wands, wide bands of the speckled creatures now turning a deep and vivid crimson. She dimmed her own wand and watched in amazement as the insect she had been concentrating her beam on began to glow with the same crimson light, becoming visible to her naked eye in the darkness and briefly flexing its skeletal wings, while its counterparts remained invisible.

“You’re right,” she said in surprise, “they’re reacting to our magic.”

“We don’t have time for bug collecting I’m afraid,” Harry replied. “Let’s keep going.”

Hemione took one last look at the dimly glowing creatures as they made their way out of the domed cave.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she muttered.

Though there was plenty to see in each of the caves they came across the path they were following was mercifully uneventful. There were a couple of times when they needed to give each other a boost up or a helping hand, but for the most part it was relatively even, and wide enough for them to walk along in twos or threes. Hermione kept Snape a yard or so ahead of her. Though the caves weren’t exactly in the most accessible of places they had been explored several times and the map they had with them seemed more than adequately accurate. There was a bit of banter between them, mostly between Harris and McKinney with Harry joining in now and then, but for the most part they suck to the route and concentrated on their steps.

After a few hours more the layout of the caves became noticeably different. The caverns themselves began to get smaller, the passages between them becoming longer, and more narrow. Before long none of them were chatting at all as they made their way through the more winding of the tunnels. For the first time since their descent Hermione felt a marked twinge of uneasiness, as she ran her hand along a passage wall now close enough to touch, and watched Snape duck now and then to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling.

“It’s getting rather cramped now, hey?” McKinney quipped, as they took turns to side-step through a particularly narrow opening.

“At least it’s warm,” Harris replied. “I though we’d be freezing our asses off this deep underground. If my ex-miner of a Grandad is to be believed anyway.”

“Thermal activity has an effect on the ambient temperature,” Harry told him as he picked his way further along the passage cautiously. “There’s a lot of lava in the caverns below us and we’re feeling the heat,” he clarified, seeing McKinney’s politely-blank face.

“Lava, eh?” Harris said unenthusiastically. “Lovely.”

“The chances of any seismic activity occurring during the relatively brief time we'll be down here are slim-to-none,” Snape chimed in then. “We’re far more likely to become lost in labyrinthine tunnels or crushed by falling rocks than having to deal with the logistical problem of lava.”

“Yes, thank you, Professor Pessimism,” Harris muttered.

“Just doing my job as Element expert,” Snape replied, stooping his head into his arrogant bow again while they shuffled their way along the tunnel.

“That's enough of your expertise for now, I think,” Hermione said quietly, but he turned his head to look over his shoulder at her so she knew he had heard her. He didn’t reply, but he seemed to heed her softly spoken order, for they all continued along in silence for a long time.

Harry paused now and then to study his map and perhaps refold it a little, and he gave short instructions now and then for something to be passed or a position to be filled, but for the most part each member of the team picked their way along the stone corridors and cramped caverns in distracted silence. Quite a time had passed since their long apparation to South America, and they had been going non-stop since then, the gradual difficulty the narrowing caves now presented only added to the weariness they were all beginning to feel.

Harry checked his map again and found that they weren’t too far away from a large cavern marked on the map as a sort of midway-point. They pressed on at the news, determined to make the cave within the hour, the challenge of setting themselves a small deadline distracting from the pressing atmosphere around them.

The Midway Cavern, as it became dubbed, was easy enough to spot as soon as they entered it. Unlike the small, grubby cellar-like caves of the past few hours, they suddenly opened out into a wide and echoing space much more like the caverns near the entrance. Plateaus of rock bisected the room and provided platforms for puddles and pools to form, water dripped down from the ceiling leaving crystalised rock hanging above their heads like chandeliers, their light was reflected from the glassy surface of the water to fill the cave with a blue-tinged glow. Harry ordered them to gather on a dry rocky platform away from the damp cave floor. They piled on the supplies using their wands and then made the short climb.

“We’ll rest here,” Harry said, stripping off his backpack and stretching his spine once the weight had gone.

McKinney pulled a water-flask from his pack and took several long gulps from it. Hermione sat down on the hard rock and pulled off her right boot. She massaged her little toe through her sock, feeling a twinge of pain, she stripped the sock off to find she had a blister. She healed it quickly with her wand and pulled her sock and boot on again. Harry opened out his map completely and spread it out on the ground, pinning it down at the corner with random objects from his supplies, and set his wand hovering over it to illuminate it. The team and Snape gathered round.

“We’ve been down in these caves approximately,” Harry paused briefly at glanced at his watch, “nine hours now. I know – now I say it, it sounds like a lot, especially since we’ve been on the go that whole time. But we’ve made extremely good progress. Over seven miles according to the map.”

At this point he crouched down and pointed out various points as he mentioned them.

“Here’s the entrance we dropped into, and here’s the cavern marked ‘midway point’, where we are now. We came along this route, here, through these tunnels.” His long and, by now, rather dirty finger traced the path they just taken through recognisably decreasing caves. “According to Ministry understanding Harding and his science team had their laboratory in a few connected caves round or about this point,” he pointed to the map again. “As you can see the labs don’t seem that far from here, compared to the cave entrance. Here’s where the old cave entrance was.”

“That doesn’t look so far at all,” McKinney conceded. “About four miles?”

“Four or five,” Harry nodded, “something like that. We seem to be a fair bit beyond the midway point, in fact. The schedule allocated us two days to make it here to Midway Cavern so we really are making good time.”

“Happy days,” Harris said then. “The quicker we can get out of these caves the better.”

“Well, I wouldn’t break out the cigars quite yet, Harris,” Harry warned him. “The rest of it’s not going to be a walk in the park, from what I can tell, in fact it’s one of the reasons I called a rest-stop here.”

He reached out his hand again and pointed to the section of the map that lead away from their current position.

“We’ll have to head this way next,” he said, his forehead furrowing as he gazed down at the map with obvious concern. “Quite frankly, it’s going to be an absolute pig. Crawl-spaces, squeeze-holes, it’s apparently some of the hardest pothole caving that any of us will have been up against. It’s a merciless series of caves.”

“How long do they last for?” Hermione asked.

“About a mile and a half,” he told her. “Maybe two. After that the caves widen out again and we should find it easier going after that. It’ll to take a long time to get through this bottle-neck though. Three or four hours at least.”

“Sounds like fun,” said McKinney, a big grin on his face.

“I’ll be surprised if you still think that tomorrow,” Harry replied, but he was grinning back at his friend and colleague. “I think these caves are going to test even your passion for tight scrapes. The question is, do we stop here to camp, or go on and get it over with?”

Everyone was quiet for a few minutes while they weighed up their own decision. Hermione’s legs had an aching twinge deep inside, the thought of curling up in a warm bed and sleeping for hours was definitely appealing, but sleeping in this cave deep underground was an entirely different matter. She also knew that her legs would ache considerably more the next day, and even more than that, the day after. Besides, she wasn’t sure she would be able to sleep at all, with the knowledge of what was to come looming over her. Spaces barely big enough to crawl through. She shivered.

“I like the thought of getting it over with,” she said, the first to pipe up. “Though I’m not 100% sure I’m completely up to it.”

“I’m pretty damn tired,” McKinney agreed. “I’d rather get some rest before we attempt it.”

“If that’s what McKinney thinks, then I’m with him,” Harris added. “He’s the best caver I know, it must be sound advice.”

Harry looked at his watch again.

“It’s not long past 6pm,” he said. “If we were above ground I’d say we try and push on to take advantage of the light, but I suppose that makes no difference here, there’s nothing to stop us camping now if we’re tired and then moving off in the night.”

He studied the map again for a moment or two.

“What do you think?” He asked then, looking up at Snape, who was standing away from the group now with his back leant against the rising wall of the next stony platform. Hermione felt a twinge of guilt run through her, she had become distracted and had been neglecting to watch him for the past few minutes, but she also felt that extreme vigilance was hardly necessary at this point. He would hardly try to go off on his own down here, he wasn’t anywhere near that foolish, aside from getting lost or sticking with the team there was nowhere to go. Besides, he didn’t even have his own light.

“You’re asking me?” Was his sneering reply to Harry. “I thought I was merely a convict.”

“Convict or not, if you think you’re going to struggle at any time, I want to know.”

Snape regarded Harry for a moment or two before speaking, his arms crossed, but he seemed willing enough to co-operate and answered civilly.

“I agree with the general consensus in any case,” he said. “We should stop here for now while we’ve space to sleep and camp comfortably. Attempt the narrow caves later.”

“Motion passed then,” Harry said, folding up the map again. “We’ll move off in about, say, 8 hours? Two a.m. How does that sound?”

“Peachy,” Harris said, though his voice was more than tinged with sarcasm.

“Like you say, Potter,” Snape’s deep voice echoed again. “Day or night – makes no difference here.”

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It didn’t take long to start a fire burning and some tea brewing. They took out their beds from their cases and cast engorging spells on them, Hermione seeing to Snape’s before her own, then lay about in a rough circle while they prepared food on the fire in the centre. Once she was stretched out on the soft camp-bed, and had some warm food in her, Hermione began to feel as though she could drop off at any moment. A fairly comfortable silence descended.

“Hey, you were right about that pissing thing, Potter,” McKinney chuckle at a particular point after Harris had politely excused himself. “Harris is sounding like a damn symphony orchestra.”

“I can’t fucking help it!” Harris’ voice echoed up at them from the same general direction as the very clear sound of his personal relief. “It’s like pissing into a bloody megaphone!”

The team, aside from Snape, laughed at that.

“No secrets between friends,” McKinney called out, amused.

Snape shuffled on his mattress a little, turning to face Hermione on her own bed a short distance away, he leant his head on his hand and stared at her with dark unblinking eyes.

“And how do you feel about that, Granger?” He spoke in a low voice that stilled echoed like all the other sounds, around the cave, regardless. “Not a spot of privacy to be had.”

She glared at him coolly and zipped her sleeping bag around her.

“Needs must,” she answered simply.

He looked pointedly across the flickering fire towards Harry’s bed for a moment before staring at her again.

“Any word that passes any of our lips is bound to be overheard,” he continued. “I suppose it would be wise to be very cautious when considering what to say out loud.”

She felt a licking flame of anger run through her, instantly knowing the horribly embarrassing incident that he was referring to – as he had intended, of course. But another memory surfaced again, of his battered and bruised face the last time she’d seem him, of his infuriatingly smug silence.

“I hardly think you need to worry about that,” was her cutting reply. “You never seemed to have any problem keeping your mouth shut.”

He smirked at her in the firelight.

“Touche,” he murmured.

Hermione turned over and closed her eyes, trying to take Harry’s advice and keep her cool, she thought she might as well try and sleep a little while she had the opportunity. The knowledge of the hard trip that was to come lingered in the back of her mind. She started to drift off.

“JESUS CHRIST!”

A shout woke her from her dozing instantly. Harry leapt to his feet and lit his wand.

“McKinney?” He called out.

“I’m OK,” the other young man called back, his voice echoing up at them as Harris’ had done. “Come look at this.”

Harris and Snape climbed out of their beds and followed after Harry, Snape hurrying so he could traverse the slope down in the light of the Aurors’ wands, Hermione hesitated a moment and then followed them. When she got down to the cavern floor she saw the group of them clustered around McKinney.

“I almost walked clear into it,” he said as she drew near.

It was a wide crack in the cavern floor that was more of a void than a fissure. It was a few yards in diameter but its sheer sides fell straight down into a dark and bottomless pit. Harry aimed a spell from his wand at one of the loose stones on the ground and it instantly glowed with a dull light. He nudged it with the toe of his boot and sent it spiralling off into the deep unknown, the five of them leaning cautiously out over the edge, trying to see just how far down the hole went. The rock continued falling until it disappeared from sight. They listened for a few seconds longer but all they heard was silence.

“I don’t like that,” Harris said, stepping back from the edge of the pit.

“What’s to like?” McKinney asked. “It’s just a hole. A fucking deep hole.”

“It’s more than that,” Harris said, as they made their way back up to the campsite. “It gave me a funny turn. It’s these caves, the strangeness of ’em. Everything I am tells me I shouldn’t be here.”

“That’s a natural instinct,” said Snape. “Humans weren’t designed to survive under-ground.”

“Best learn to conquer that, sharpish,” McKinney grinned. “Or you’ll be on your knees praying in a day or two's time.”

Hermione tried to sleep again, but the memory of the unfathomable pit haunted her, and she could see the glowing stone spinning into oblivion every time she closed her eyes. She understood Harris’ bad feeling about the caves, awesome though they were too many sights today had sent chills down her spine, even fortified with her magic she felt the intense fragility of being only a single human being deep in the centre of the earth. And a more real horror was only hours away: tight spaces, close walls, pressing and insistently permanent rock.

She dozed for a little while and then woke again with a start, swallowing though her mouth was dry, feeling the panic of a nightmare that wasn’t dispersing now she was awake. She could hardly tell if she was still asleep or not, though she opened her eyes and sat up she was hardly aware of doing so, the fire had died out while she was sleeping and now the only thing that met her eyes was the dark.

She had seen the dark before, of course, but never like this. Nothing like this. It was the utterly pitch-black dark that only came with the complete and absolute absence of light, a dark that screamed against the very nature of her soul, that instilled utter blindness in its victims and – along with that – body-seizing panic. She gasped for air as she lit her wand, casting it about her, first over Snape’s sleeping form and then over the faces of her Auror companions on the beds further away. They all slept deeply.

She extinguished the light again and screwed her eyes tightly shut, desperately trying to distract herself, and shut out the overpowering darkness and the memory of the bottomless pit. She kept her wand in her hand, hardly daring to move on her mattress, fitfully waiting out the hours until the others woke again.

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A/N: Thank you very much for reading. Please R&R!
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Close Proximity